This post starts out with "when I was little" just like the last one did, so forgive me, but when I was little, my mom always had Keebler Club crackers in the pantry. She LOVED Club crackers and served them with chili and soup and salads. Need a snack? Have some Club crackers and butter. If I had a tummy ache, I got Club crackers and Pepsi, and when she made a cake (for example, an angel food cake) and had a little extra frosting, she would spread the frosting on Club crackers as a treat. I would lick the frosting off and leave the crackers, and my brother would tattle on me, "SHE'S ONLY LICKING THE FROSTING OFF AND LEAVING THE CRACKERS ON THE PLAAAAATE!" and my mom would say, "If you're not going to eat the cracker, too, then don't take any."
I liked frosting, but I. Hated. Club. Crackers.
I wanted saltines like everyone else had at their houses, and when I left home to go to college, I bought a box of saltines for my dorm room and never looked back. No more Club crackers for me, I thought, and it remained so for DECADES, until I saw a recipe for - wait for it - BACON CRACKERS.
Yes, it took bacon to get me to buy (and eat) Club crackers again.
I found the recipe on Pinterest, and you can see the original post here. You will need the following:
1 package Club crackers*
8-10 slices of bacon**
1 cup brown sugar
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1 pinch ground black pepper
Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper. (Lightly spray the rack with cooking spray if you want to make your life easier.) Put a wire rack in the pan and lay out the crackers, leaving a little space between each one.
Cut the bacon into pieces slightly larger than the cracker, or roughly into fourths. Lay one piece of bacon on each cracker. Add a heaping teaspoonful of brown sugar on top of the bacon and pat it firmly all over the bacon (this is a sticky process). Sprinkle with cayenne pepper and black pepper.
Bake for 15-20 minutes until the brown sugar gets melty and the bacon gets crisp. Allow the crackers to cool before removing from the rack and before eating.
*don't use thick cut bacon and don't waste time looking for "thin cut bacon," because if it's not labeled "thick cut" then it IS thin cut.
**one package of Club crackers means one SLEEVE of Club crackers from within the box. I thought one package meant one BOX, so I bought two boxes just in case of cracker breakage, and I had no cracker breakage
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| The ingredients. |
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| My artsy photo of the different stages of preparing the crackers for the oven |
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| Finished product |
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| See the broken cracker pieces stuck to the rack? That's how I figured out that spraying the rack with cooking spray should be a thing. |
Bottom line? The addition of bacon and brown sugar to a Club cracker is worlds better than the addition of frosting to one, but it's still a Club cracker in fancier clothes. Taste Tester Julie really enjoyed them, however, and asked if she bought me a pound of bacon, would I make a batch for her, and that, my friends, is how I'm going to get rid of the rest of the Club crackers!
